Jack Berry never did learn how to swim. He liked to refer to himself as the world's No. 1 aquaphobe. The fear dated back to his Boy Scout days, when he fell into the Middle Rouge River.
That fear, though, never kept him from the golf course, where he made his mark … and, yes, some big numbers, too.
"My ball," he once quipped in his 80s, "had an instinct for water."
Berry, a member of the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame who was a sports writer in Detroit for decades, including long stints at both the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, died Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, at a rehab facility in West Bloomfield Township, following a recent fall at his Northville apartment, according to a social media post by the Hall of Fame. Berry's wife, Bonnie, confirmed Berry's death.
Berry celebrated his 95th birthday earlier this month.
Berry was a sports writer at The Detroit News from 1971 until his retirement in 1993, and he chronicled some of sports' most iconic moments, including Team USA's "Miracle on Ice" gold-medal performance in men's hockey at the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid, and Secretariat's Triple Crown in 1973.
Before joining The News, Berry wrote from the crosstown rival, the Detroit Free Press, from 1959-71. During his tenure there, he covered the Red Wings, Michigan State football and winter sports, including skiing and ski jumping.
Berry got his professional start in sports writing at the Detroit bureau of United Press International, covering the Tigers, Lions, Red Wings and Pistons, as well as Michigan football, high schools and small colleges. At UPI, Berry covered the Lions' last NFL championship, in 1957.
At UPI, he also covered the first Buick Open, the PGA Tour's stop in Grand Blanc that ran from 1958 until 2009. That set Berry on a long and distinguished career in golf writing, one that lasted long into his official retirement. Berry covered golf for both the Free Press and The News and he loved to play the sport almost as much as he loved writing about it, even if he was much better at one than the other. Legend has it that Rick Smith, in designing the par-3 course at Treetops in Gaylord in the early 1990s, used Berry as a guinea pig to test where he should put the shorter tees.
"Jack was gifted with the pen, but not necessarily with the golf club," west Michigan golf writer Terry Moore, Berry's longtime friend and colleague, said with a laugh. "But he played briskly and he knew about etiquette.
"He didn't play well all the time, but he did play with dispatch, as he would say."
Berry was a master at picking up — he'd pick up when out of a hole, always cognizant of pace of play, and he'd pick up trash on the course that had been left behind by other groups. Berry played in a nine-hole league into his 90s, and he would still walk the course when he could. Until very recently, he still was working on his putting.
For all the big sporting events he covered — including the Tigers' 1968 World Series championship, the Indy 500, the Rose Bowl, the Miami Dolphins' perfect season in the 1970s, Muhammad Ali's TKO of Al Lewis in Dublin in 1972 — it was the golf that Berry loved the most, because, as he once wrote, golf was "a game for life."
Berry covered all of golf's major championships, including 43 Masters. His golf-writing career spanned from the end of Ben Hogan's playing days to the heyday of Tiger Woods' career. He covered wins by Jack Nicklaus (including his Masters win in 1986, at age 46), Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Lee Trevino, Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros. He covered several Ryder Cups, including Team Europe's rout of the United States at Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Township in 2004. Berry once said the Ryder Cup was better than the Super Bowl, "No contest."
Berry also covered the local golf scene better than any of his predecessors or his successors, treating a local U.S. Open qualifier or the Michigan Open with as much fervor and passion of the final round at Augusta or Pebble Beach. Berry collected so much content, The Detroit News gave him his own golf page in its print edition.
"He covered all the beats," said Moore, who co-founded Michigan Golfer magazine in 1983, and made Berry one of his first hires, knowing that getting Berry's name on the magazine's masthead would give the newborn publication some instant credibility. "Us young reporters and writers always admired Jack's energy and diligence in covering the beat.
"My small role in Michigan golf is probably due to Jack Berry's mentoring and guidance. I learned so much from Jack."
With a quick wit and straight-shooting style of asking questions, Berry could interview anybody and put them at ease — from the local club pro to the greats of the game. And he was as versatile and professional as any sports writer in Michigan and Detroit history, said Lynn Henning, Berry's longtime colleague at The Detroit News. Berry was a throwback to an era where news men and women were to report the news, not be the news.
Berry also wrote clean copy, and he wrote it fast — faster, Henning said, than anybody but perhaps the late Joe Falls, his colleague at the Free Press and The News.
"On an unforgiving deadline, he could give you 800 words in 20 minutes," Henning said of Berry on Saturday, Oct. 17.
"And they would be print-ready words."
Berry was one of the original founders of the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame in 1982, and 21 years later, he became just the second journalist inducted into the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame. It was one of many accolades throughout his decades in sports writing.
In 2007, the PGA of America presented him with its lifetime achievement, and in 2010, the Masters presented him with its major achievement award (that also came with a prime parking spot at that year's Masters, which he was most tickled about). The Golf Association of Michigan presented him with its distinguised service award in 1997. The Michigan Golf Course Owners Association presented him with a lifetime achievement award in 2008.
Berry was president of the Golf Writers Association of America from 1984-86, and secretary from 1990-98. During his tenure as president, he was influential in lifting the Masters' ban on female reporters in the locker room.
Outside of work, Berry loved a good meal, a glass of red wine, and running. He ran the 1988 New York City Marathon, two years after a cardiac incident suffered while covering The Players Championship nearly killed him. Berry loved concerts, plays and the symphony.
"Jack's personal fabric," said Henning, "was vast."
Berry was a proud "Girl Dad," survived by his four daughters, Anne, Susan, Karen and Jill. He also is survived by wife Bonnie Humm, as well as five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Berry was born Oct. 7, 1931, at Providence Hospital in Detroit, and attended Epiphany grammar school and Detroit Catholic Central High School, where he first learned how to swing a golf club. He grew up a big sports fan, particularly of the Detroit Tigers, for whom his father was the traveling secretary in the 1940s and 1950s. He attended games at Briggs Stadium and idolized Hank Greenberg.
Berry later attended Marquette University from 1949-51, before serving in the U.S. Army as a corporal from 1952-54. Berry returned to college on the G.I. Bill and earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from Michigan State in 1956.
That's when his passion was sports reporting and writing was born, leading to a career in which, according to Henning, "He crafted one of the richest legacies of any sports writer in Detroit's press-box annals."
"My favorite colors are blue and green, blue sky and green grass. I've had my share of both," Berry wrote in his farewell column for The Detroit News in 1993. "And in newspapering, my favorite thing has been to find out what's going on and write about it. Thanks for reading it."
Services for Berry haven't yet been finalized. They are expected to take place later this fall.
tpaul@detroitnews.com
@tonypaul1984
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Jack Berry, legendary Detroit News and Free Press sports writer, dies at 95